A Word About Emmaus Church

My name is Tom Boyer (writing on behalf of the church), and I’ve had the joy and privilege of serving as the Senior Pastor at Emmaus Church since 2020. During that time span, we have welcomed approximately fifty new babies into our church community. We’ve seen people grow and work through issues of mental health. Similarly, we’ve wrestled alongside friends and church members dealing with addiction and other struggles. We’ve mourned with the bereaved, the ill, and the dying. We’ve seen lives transformed in wonderful, meaningful, and often unexpected ways.

During my time at Emmaus, my experiences have been very full — many joys and many sorrows. What sticks out to me in all of this is the innate human need for community. The need for friends, the need for a shared faith, the need for people you can laugh with, the need for people you can cry with, and the need for people you can rely on and trust.

It’s no small secret that we live in an age of loneliness and isolation. Unfortunately, this is even the case here in White Bear Lake. More people live alone today than during any point in recorded history here in White Bear (see 1—6 in the 2040 Comprehensive City Plan). It is well documented that rates of depression, anxiety, and general mental illness are at an all-time high. Surely there are many reasons for this and many potential restoratives. But one longstanding remedy to such ills is meaningful community and intentional places of worship.

We’ve been blessed to experience such deep and meaningful community at Emmaus Church. However, the reality is that our space is incredibly limited. The lot that we own is small. And the building structure was made long ago with no foresight of potential growth that has now been realized in White Bear. Due to this, our ability to serve the community is immediately hindered. In fact, on a regular Sunday morning at Emmaus, we already have to divide our church (upstairs and downstairs) to be able to fit everyone who wants to be part of the church service.

Unfortunately, space is a city-wide problem. The White Bear Lake 2040 Comprehensive Plan states, “As a developed community, White Bear Lake will most likely experience only a limited amount of growth through the year 2040. Most of the growth will occur through redevelopment as there are very few vacant, developable properties remaining in the city” (2—32). The same Comprehensive Plan talks of the need for “focused redevelopment.”

As the Plan rightly declares, the city has some developmental challenges ahead, primarily due to the fact that it’s already highly developed. The remedy the city proposed, and the remedy we aim to follow, is one of “focused redevelopment”—using the limited space we have more wisely and functionally, to offer the greatest value to our surrounding community.

Our hope is to expand our building, in order to create a more meaningful space for community and fellowship, so that the lonely might find friendship and hope, the anxious might find calming counsel, the hurting might find a healing word, even joy! We are hopeful this can happen. We have seen such things happen already!

We have spent much time considering the best route forward in our focused redevelopment. The drawings before you are our best attempt to balance all desires, concerns, and limitations — creating what we believe is a great community benefit without any major community impediment. These plans approximately double our usable building area, give us much more usable community space, add approximately 80 more seats to our sanctuary, convert exterior pavement into a playground for children, and even add some additional outdoor space to dream (a potential community garden has been discussed). I should add here that this modest expansion won't exactly allow us to become a megachurch, and we have no desire to grow without limits. We love being a neighborhood church and are simply seeking the space to grow to around 300 regular attenders.

The concern with our plan is surely the lack of parking made available on-site. We are well aware of this drawback. But we hope the city will look generously at the obvious good of this plan and will simultaneously consider the parking situation from a holistic mindset.

Our current parking lot is already undersized. Approximately 12 cars park in the lot each Sunday. With the potential addition of 80 seats in the sanctuary, we may see 30 additional cars come downtown each Sunday morning, in order to be part of the church. Putting those two numbers together, that means that this plan may require the parking of 42 additional cars on a Sunday morning. We have multiple city lots within easy walking distance that could more than facilitate this need, especially on Sunday mornings when downtown White Bear is very quiet. Along with those open lots, we have hundreds of street parking spots surrounding us. These are the same city streets that park over a thousand cars downtown every Thursday throughout the summer. Based on the alternatives surrounding us, there’s no apparent reason we could not find places to park 42 cars on a quiet Sunday morning.

In many respects a parking lot would be ideal. However, such an addition is not a reality within the lot’s size. But it’s also worth considering, a large slab of black concrete does not seem fitting in this pristine and beautiful location overlooking the lake. We hope to refinish the entirety of the building exterior—adding to its aesthetic beauty. Along with that, we aim to landscape in a manner fitting the neighborhood’s simple elegance. The parking lot is a pragmatic feature, but when all the nearby parking opportunities are taken into account, azaleas may indeed prove to be a better solution than asphalt.

We agree with these words from the 2040 Comprehensive Plan, “White Bear Lake is unique in its character with a distinct small-town appeal. The City’s rich history, its strong spirit of volunteerism and progressive approach to opportunities and challenges make it a great place to live and work” (1–6).

We desire to continue being a good in this city—serving the people, supporting local businesses, and being a regular presence for community, fellowship, and worship. We believe that our building plans would help facilitate this very reality, and we are open to receiving further feedback from you, our neighbors, and from the city to further improve these plans. Thank you for sharing.

Sincerely,

Tom Boyer, Senior Pastor

On behalf of Emmaus Church